College Football: Can Akron win ground war with Northern Illinois

DEKALB — Idaho, Purdue, Kent State and now Akron: coach Rod Carey keeps ringing the alarm before Northern Illinois plays a team with a losing record.

“You’re talking about a good football team,” he said. “I know I sound like a broken record.”

He has a point; on their best day, each of those teams was good. Akron lost by 40 points to Ohio last week, but today’s 4 p.m. homecoming foe at a packed Huskie Stadium narrowly lost to Michigan, 28-24, on the Zips’ best day.

“They lost the Michigan game, but Michigan did not beat them,” Carey said. “They pushed around Michigan all day.

“Their feet are on the ground and their pads are low. They are moving people. They are moving Michigan. I don’t care what your record is; if you’re moving Michigan, you are doing a good job up front.”

But NIU has perfected moving people up front.

It’s hard to imagine Akron (1-5, 0-2 MAC East) beating No. 23 NIU (5-0, 1-0 MAC West) in a ground war. The Huskies run for 303.4 yards a game. The Zips are 12th in the MAC with a 99.5-yard average.

And no matter how well the Huskies run, they want to run better after struggling on the ground in their two losses in last year’s Orange Bowl season.

“Against Florida State and Iowa, we got pushed around and we have a chip on our shoulder about that,” center Andrew Ness said. “It just makes us want to play better and show people what we’re about.”

NIU has to win every game to get back to a BCS bowl, and although the Huskies have been perfect so far, only the Purdue game was won easily. Perhaps that’s why Carey reminds the Huskies of danger everywhere, even when it comes to DeKalb with a 1-5 record.

And why he wants an offensive line that has paved the way for the Huskies to lead the Mid-American Conference in rushing by 92 yards to push foes around even more.

“They got pushed around last year in a lot of key moments and they don’t want that to happen again this year,” Carey said. “We haven’t faced all of our key moments this year, so we have to make sure we’re staying hungry.”